Those Who Make Us Stronger
by xxsewnlipsxx
Summary: Kaidan's in mourning after the death of Commander Shepard, but Liara offers an interesting balm to soothe the pain. M Shepard/ Kaidan


It was nearly six months after Shepard disappeared into the Citadel and never came back down that Kaidan gathered his duffel bag and flew to Anderson's-Shepard's-old apartment and resigned himself to moving on with his life. For those four months he'd been tirelessly helping to rebuild Earth, throwing his Spectre weight around as much as he could to help the refugees in a manner most like the late commander. There was so much to rebuild; most of the planet was in ruins. Yet after so little progress, he'd been shut down by high command for more advanced assignments and forced into a state of temporary inactive duty to "clear his head". A large part of him suspected James had tattled on him to Liara about his nightmares and serious headaches since Shepard's death, and she'd used her influence to make him stop working and deal with his pent-up emotions.

The problem was that Kaidan didn't want to deal with them, because they hurt like hell. Losing Shepard was like losing a limb, and he felt ignoring it was the best way to keep himself from going crazy. But it wasn't working, and he had to admit even to himself that he was getting sharper with the volunteers and the builders, the sleeplessness and stress making him jumpy and irritable. So perhaps James and Liara and the Alliance were right, and he needed a break.

He'd thought about going home to see his family, but he'd already had to endure his mother's sobbing and babying him after Shepard and his father's deaths and didn't want to deal with it again. As much as he loved her, she made him feel like a child, splitting open vulnerable wounds far too easily and encouraging him to break down. He couldn't handle that just yet, didn't want to see the pity and raw emotion reflected in her eyes. After the _Normandy _docked on Earth for a rather long stay, EDI had informed him that Shepard's apartment and all his personal affects had been left to Kaidan given that he was the closest thing to family Shepard had. So what better place to get away from it all and just deal with his feelings than in the quiet of the expensive, newly-refurbished Citadel wards?

Seeing the apartment was more difficult than it should have been. Since Anderson relinquished ownership, Shepard had worked very hard to personalize the place. There were pictures of him and the crew on every mantel, every virtual screen that kicked on once Kaidan unlocked the door. His terrible club-like playlist filled the air when Kaidan stepped inside, and he may have jabbed the button a bit too violently in his effort to turn it off. There were empty beer bottles on the coffee table and a blanket thrown haphazardly over the couch, remote askew, Shepard's hoodie on the floor. Personal touches that made the dull, aching pain in Kaidan's gut throb and forced him to clench his jaw.

The first few weeks were the worst. With access to nearly limitless credits with the combination of his bank and Shepard's and a bar in both the apartment and just across the street, he nearly poisoned himself twice. Friends called. He didn't answer. One very concerned voice message from Liara made him consider it. This was him "clearing his head" though, at her behest, so he found it most satisfactory to have her worry. But it got easier as time went by, and Kaidan eventually stopped imbibing and started showering and shaving again. He put on shoes and used the workout room on the bottom floor. He washed Shepard's hoodie and tucked it carefully in the back of the closet, out of sight, out of mind. The pictures on the mantels began to help rather than hurt, and he found himself cooking one night and grinning bitterly to himself as the smell of burned garlic permeated the room.

Slowly, the others began to filter in. Joker popped by one afternoon and shared a lager with him, informing him that the rebuilding was going well; he was helping with transportation of food, supplies, and volunteers from other worlds. Billions had returned home to see their origin planet restored. When he left, Kaidan felt better. Renewed. Tali and Garrus told him of their own homeworlds, staying the night and sharing a bed. The thought made Kaidan smile, and he wished them well. James came to confess that it was his idea that Kaidan get some rest. Kaidan forgave him easily, and they went out for dinner, speaking of happier things and avoiding the topic of Shepard altogether, regardless of the fact that it hurt just a little less to talk about. Perhaps he wasn't the only one with unhealed wounds. Wrex came to clap him hard on the back, nearly sending him to the floor, and spent the day at the nearby combat simulator just tearing apart fake Cerberus troops. Just like old times.

Liara was mysteriously absent, promising several times to visit and never getting around to it. He understood, though, given her position as Shadow Broker and the ragged state of Thessia. There was a lot someone in her position could do to help. Liara and he had always been close, and he missed her. They spoke through omnitool sometimes, when she wasn't working. Still, it wasn't until two weeks after the one year anniversary of Shepard's death that he simultaneously got a call to return to active duty after months of requesting it and a visit from his favorite Asari.

Kaidan opened the door happily, his dress blues pressed and out of his duffel bag, more comfortable in the starchy sturdiness of Alliance clothing than he ever had been in civilian dress.

Except instead of the friendly blue eyes he expected to see, he came face-to-face with larger, owlish green ones that were more like tiny star systems set into a very small, light blue face with tangles of white markings across the bridge of the nose. Liara had her back turned to the door, a baby propped over her shoulder as if she were in the process of burping it. At his surprised sound, she turned. Kaidan stared and backed up a step. "Uh, I..." he blinked at Liara, dumbstuck.

"Kaidan, I've done something very, very unethical," she exclaimed, brushing past him and inviting herself in to pace along the shining floors in a very irritated manner. The baby asari wriggled unhappily in her arms for a moment before settling down again."I...I don't know what came over me. I was just so frightened...and concerned. For his safety. Or for myself. I didn't want to lose him again. I...oh, Goddess, I just..." She looked frantically to him, gaze glassy with tears. "Help me, please."

"Woah, woah, calm down, Liara," he said, hands up in a calming and surrendering gesture as the doors whooshed closed behind him. The baby was so tiny by human standards—he'd never seen an Asari younger than a full adult before—and had the appearance of a newborn. "What are you talking about?"

The prospect of explaining again seemed to overwhelm her and she pressed a palm to her forehead, "Oh, Goddess, I'm such a fool. Such a fool. What will you think of me?"

Very gently, he didn't want to distress her further and really didn't want to make the baby start crying, too, he began to guide her to the couch. Once seated, she moved the infant so it was seated gently in her arms. Kaidan could see it—she, they were all women by human standards—was dressed in pink varren pajamas with a small white blanket. For the first time, Kaidan noticed the large baby bag over Liara's shoulder and was startled by the sheer weight when she dropped it to the ground beside her.

"So...the baby," Kaidan indicated nervously, "is it—she one of the refugee's? Are you fostering or something?"

Liara bit her bottom lip. "I...that's sort of the problem. She's not...she's mine," she confessed in a huff.

Kaidan's eyes widened considerably. But who? "I didn't even know you were seeing someone," he coughed before being struck with sudden inspiration. "Oh, is it the Drell guy you and Shepard rescued from the Shadowbroker? I got the impression you were close." For the life of him, he couldn't remember the man's name. Faren or something similar. Kaidan had never met him; that was during Shepard's time with Cerberus.

Liara traced the baby's cheek with her fingertips. Quiet girl. She only moved a little and tried to pull her mother's fingers into her mouth. Like a human. So similar. "No, I...Goddess, I don't know how to begin. Kaidan, I don't want to cause you pain. This has been so hard on you."

He tensed, not particularly liking the sound of that. "Liara, I'm your friend," he said, "and whatever you have to tell me, I'd really like for you to just get it over with. You're making me, uh, you're making me really nervous."

She sighed and seemed to deflate, shoulders slumping. "The last battle. Shepard was...he was going around, talking with all of us. Saying goodbye."

_We know the score. We know this is goodbye._

The memory hit him like a freight train, leaving his mind whirling. The end was the hardest to deal with. Those moments, the bloody, merciless, endless fighting, the shattering screams, the pressure, expectation of failure, were still raw for many reasons. They lost others, too. They lost Anderson, and Kaidan lost a lot of his students. There were thousands of husks crawling from every corner, devouring his comrades, and banshees shrieking and brutes pummeling dozens of men at once. Fighting on Earth was the most intense kind of battle he'd ever been in, overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of the enemy, and he still had nightmares about it. All that terror and fear excluding the fact that the love of his life was taken from him in an instant.

But Liara was continuing, and he forced his emotions aside to focus. "I didn't know what else to do," she told him. "I wanted to give him something. A moment of peace. So I melded with him—platonically," she assured him at Kaidan's horrified look. "I showed him stars and other beautiful things, but what I was really doing was taking his genetic code and using the best of it to create...I just wanted to save him. I triggered the pregnancy meld on a whim. Shepard never knew. He didn't agree, and I..." She bent her head over the child.

Kaidan couldn't help it. He stood up. "Wait, wait, wait, wait," he said, unable to help the slightly hysterical chuckle that came out with the words. "You're telling me, that you—that while the rest of us were saying goodbye and hoping, hoping it wasn't the last we were going to see of Shepard, you were creating a...a contingency plan? You took a piece of Shepard-" he choked over the name for the first time in so long, "and you-"

Suddenly he recognized those fathomless green eyes staring up from that pretty blue skin, and it made him both furious and desperate to look deeper. Shepard was _in there_, trapped in a tiny scrap of a creature, swaddled in a blanket and fuzzy pajamas. Before he knew it, Kaidan was kneeling beside Liara with a hand over his mouth, staring at the baby, trying to fight back his own tears. He thought Shepard was _gone_, lost completely and utterly, but no, there was still _something_ of him alive and well and breathing and with Kaidan.

"_Damn it_," he clenched a fist as his biotics emerged, not wanting to hurt the baby or lose control. Liara's hand covered his fist, and she buried her nose into his shoulder and began to cry, as well. At last the baby gave a wail and began to wriggle fussily in her arms. Liara sucked in a breath and adjusted the child.

"Kaidan, I'm so sorry," she said. "I...don't even know if I should apologize."

Wiping the back of his hand swiftly over his reddened eyes, Kaidan moved the blanket away from the baby's face. He heard it said that Asari didn't actually use the genes of their partners. They just used the genetic variation to randomize their own so there was a diversification within their population. Yet Kaidan could see the tilt of Shepard's eyes on the infant, even a bit of his nose. Of course, the child was alien and still a child. How much could really carry across?

Honestly, he didn't know whether or not to be angry. Should he be? Or fervently thankful that Liara had saved a piece of Shepard, however small, once again? What was the protocol for your friend impregnating herself with your dead lover's DNA without telling anyone? "You were so sure he was going to die?" Kaidan asked her, swallowing hard.

"I had a feeling," Liara said. "He'd lived through so much. And there were always going to be casualties Kaidan. Shepard's luck had to run out sometime. Not even he could beat the odds for so long."

_But he did_, Kaidan didn't say. _He beat them for so long. So so long. And I wasn't there for as much of it as I should have been._

"If he'd lived?"

Liara jerked in her seat, startled by the question before glancing down at the baby. "I suppose I would have ended the pregnancy, and never revealed my intentions. And that would have been for the best. But now? I couldn't imagine life without her. Kaidan, she's the joy of my life. And even so small, at such a young age, you wouldn't believe how she reminds me of Shepard. They say Asari don't inherit characteristics such as that, but I see them. In her."

He cleared his throat, trying to fight the persistent lump there. "Like what?" His voice was scratchy and low, hoarser than usual.

A small, cheerful laugh. "Her stubbornness for one. And her silence. And those eyes. Goddess, they're just like his, aren't they? My eyes aren't green." Shifting the child in her arms, she chanced a look at Kaidan. "Do you want to hold her?"

Immediately, he felt awkward. "Oh, I...Liara, I don't know anything about holding babies. Especially Asari babies. I mean...what about her head?" With human children, he knew to support the head because the neck was still fragile, the bones in the skull soft and malleable. With Asari, they had the sculpted crests. He didn't know if the same rule applied. Would he mush them if he tried to apply his rules? Watching Liara do it, he didn't notice a real difference in the way humans held their children. But what if there was some secret?

"Don't worry so much," Liara's soft voice assured him, turning on the couch so they were facing each other. "Here. Make a cradle with your arms. Just support her neck and head." The baby was gently deposited in his arms, and he felt a flutter of nerves in his stomach, the impossible lightness of her making him feel even more frightened of harming her. She fussed little before shoving her knuckles into her mouth and peering up at him a little skeptically, as if unsure of his merit.

Kaidan let out a breathless chuckle at the expression. Yeah, she was Shepard's kid.

The thought gave him a pang of jealousy. Yeah, she was Shepard's kid. She should have been _his _and Shepard's kid. Not Liara's. She should have been human, picked up from an orphanage somewhere, probably the sorriest one of the bunch because Shepard's heart had always been too grand for his own good. Or grown in a tank with a donor egg, paid for with their joint bank account, a nursery decorated months before hand just waiting for her to be spoiled rotten in. Maybe in the apartment he was sitting in. Maybe on beachfront property in Canada.

Because Kaidan had always wanted children. And later, after he fell in love with Commander Shepard, he wanted them even more.

The baby cried out and kicked one foot. Kaidan fumbled, adjusting her a little. "Sorry," he said, as if she understood. "What's her name?" he asked, realizing that he didn't know.

Liara was up and pacing again in an instant, her omnitool appearing as she punched in something. "I had a little trouble with that," she confessed. "I didn't know and couldn't find anything about Shepard's parents. And figured that he probably wouldn't want the baby named after them anyway. 'John' isn't exactly appropriate for a girl. I thought of Ashley, but I didn't want to dredge up the past. So I settled on this."

A foreign language appeared on the screen in front of him, just a few symbols that were not of the roman alphabet. No language he spoke or even recognized. "I can't read it," he confessed.

"It's Hebrew," she told him, "of human origin. Pronounced 'Tikva". It means...hope."

Hope. A notion that they relied heavily upon toward the end, among other things. Hope in Shepard. Hope their plan would work. Hope that they would live beyond the war. Hope that Shepard could save them all this time.

"I like it," he said after a moment, repeating the name softly and tentatively touching the baby's cheek with one finger. Her skin was smooth, flawless. Beautiful. "Tikva," he called to her, and she gurgled a little in reply.

Liara hovered awkwardly. "I'm glad you're not angry with me, Kaidan."

A silence descended, and he rocked Tikva a little. "I don't know what I feel right now. I should be happy for you, I guess. You've got a beautiful daughter. Shepard's daughter."

"But she's not mine," Liara kneeled at his feet. "or at least, she shouldn't be. She should be yours and Shepard's. That's why I told you first. Because I don't have a partner, Kaidan, and I'm the Shadow Broker. And I don't have time to raise a baby all by myself."

Kaidan's vision swam. "Wait...what are you saying?" he felt the nerves flaring again. "Are you asking me to help?"

"I am," Liara said firmly. "I want you to be a part of her life." She smiles sadly. "After all, a girl needs a father, as you humans say, and Shepard's exploits are too numerous for me to have to recount alone."

And Kaidan was sold, so easily. Sold into those bottomless eyes and those pale blue lips and the promise of something, someone to love and care for again. So Liara had papers drawn up and assigned Kaidan an honorary legal guardian in the event of her death and went with him a month later to buy cutesy baby things for Tikva, like an array of differently-colored pacifiers and a biotic-proof crib that came with two stuffed pyjaks free with every purchase. And Kaidan called Hackett and told him he was going to oversee his work from the Citadel, asking him to call only for special assignments. He delved into research about what to feed baby Asari and how to raise them and submerged himself in their culture and art and kids' shows. A week later when Liara came to drop Tikva off, she laughed to find him sleeping on the couch, buried in old Asari paperbacks with Vaenia glitching out on the screen.

The first time was the most difficult, because, no matter what Kaidan did, Tikva wouldn't stop screaming at the top of her lungs. He changed her, fed her, burped her, made funny faces, held her, rocked her, and eventually set her on a checkered baby pad on the floor to just stare down helplessly at her while she shrieked so loudly it brought back memories of the banshees on Earth. After nearly an hour of shaking dozens of toys at her, trying to distract her if nothing else, he placed an emergency call to Liara and begged for her help.

Eventually Kaidan realized her boots and jacket were still on and, upon removing them, assumed Tikva must have been too hot under the lights of the apartment. His ears echoed with her crying for hours afterward, and he fell asleep next to her on the baby pad as soon as it stopped.

Kaidan was smart and learned quickly. Their time together became more pleasant, and it wasn't long before Tikva would giggle excitedly and reach for him whenever Liara held her too long. The plan initially had been that Tikva would live with Liara and visit Kaidan for a month every other month. However, with Kaidan staying at home save for his Spectre missions, and Liara's many obligations, Tikva became more of a permanent resident at his home than at hers.

Once all the proper papers were drawn up and everyone had a bit more free time, Kaidan and Liara gathered the old crew together and told them about the baby and her connection to Shepard. No one really knew what to think, and the silence after Liara confessed seemed to stretch on for ages. Eventually Tali stepped forward and held her arms out for the baby, saying, "At least we still have some part of Shepard." After that, the tension eased out of the room, and everyone crowded around Tikva to inspect her further. Wrex, however, was not impressed and muttered, "That's the ugliest thing I've ever seen. How is that going to survive in the wild?"

His heart would melt, though, years later when he would repeat it to her flushed, eight-year-old face and receive a biotically-enhanced kick to the kneecap for his rudeness.

She grew slowly, Kaidan noticed after a few months.

Based on his research, given their long lifespans, Asari aged physically slowly, as well. At six months, she was still as soft and vulnerable as a newborn. At five years, she was nearly the size of the average three year old human. But her mind wasn't slow, and she took to Kaidan's early teaching techniques well (which involved a lot of horseplay and double-fudge brownies crumbled atop ice cream afterward).

Watching her go off to school made Kaidan a nervous wreck, and hosting her first slumber party made him nearly tearful. Liara had to hand out most of the snacks so he wouldn't tell anymore "lame baby stories" or make anymore "Dad jokes". At least Tikva came in to kiss his cheek goodnight before she and her friends bedded down to trade secrets in the dark.

When she was around nine years old, everyone started to get married. Tali and Garrus finally tied the knot in a strange Turian and Quarian ceremony. EDI reapplied Dr. Eva's cybernetic skin mesh and obtained a marriage license via the extranet. James settled down with some civilian with legs a mile long and a scheming, gold digging smile. Jacob had been married for years, but he had another kid, and Kaidan was invited to the renewal of his wedding vows. Liara fell hard and fast for a quarian contact who, so she said, tried to overthrow her as the Shadowbroker and came very close to succeeding.

Kaidan met an Alliance officer named Ian who he visited on the Wards for stress relief, but there was no love. His love was invested in a small, vicious little Asari that grew more like Shepard every day.

Really, it was something to see, the way she knew just how to utilize Shepard's inherent charisma, the charm and coercion that convinced entire species to fight for him. Her smile was blinding, two rows of perfectly white teeth hidden only sometimes behind pouty, ruddy lips. Those eyes only grew in size as she did, large and innocent and liquid against the dark blue of her face, a smattering of freckles appearing around age twelve. Then suddenly, at thirteen, she was too big for Kaidan to hold, too gangly for him to pick up and swing (though that hardly stopped him sometimes).

When she was fourteen, Liara and the Quarian had their equivalence of a marriage ceremony, and Tikva moved permanently in with him to give the new couple their space; it was hard at first for her, but she was so understanding, so compassionate. Like Shepard. Kaidan spent a fortune making sure her room was just the way she liked it in an effort to cheer her up, and when he was done, she squealed with delight as only a teenager could. He started to notice his silver hair that day, reflected in her brand new deep purple mirror and wondered what Shepard would have thought of it.

When the fifteen year anniversary of Shepard's death came around, he took her to the ceremony. They went out and bought a silvery, conservative dress for her with snap-on earrings and real silver and platinum bracelets. Kaidan wore his old blue battle armor, still chipped and burned and smelling of ash. He hadn't worn it since the day they took back Earth, and it was both a little snug around the middle and a bit heavier than he remembered. The others came, as well, bowing their heads respectfully, recalling old memories of Shepard as if they were all aboard the _Normandy _again. The entire affair reminded him far too much of Thane's funeral.

Kaidan took Tikva home early and sat on the couch for the rest of the night sipping a beer and peering pensively into the fire, remembering. Halfway through the night cycle, Tikva came down to take his hand and lay her head on his shoulder. "I'm sorry you lost him," she said by way of comfort.

"You, too."

They fell asleep on the couch.

Tikva had been stoic for most of it, appearing only sympathetic for her mother and pseudo-father. Kaidan and Liara both had told her the stories of Shepard, her real father, had explained the importance of his mission and what he did not just for humanity but for all species. The stress he underwent. The challenges he faced. The friends he made. The hearts he broke when he left. As a child she used to sit and listen with wide eyes, fascinated and awed. Older, it must have seemed like a fairy tale. Already there were millions if not billions of children who didn't know the war with the Reapers had ever existed. With enough time, Shepard would fade into distant memory. Not for Kaidan or Liara or Garrus or Wrex or Tali or Joker or any of the others, but for their children's children? Perhaps. They'd know the legend, not the man. The stories, not the truth.

At least Tikva was a consolation. At least they weren't left all alone this time.

This time Shepard's death didn't feel like drowning.

Years later, three months and eleven days after Tikva's twentieth birthday, Kaidan would die in the hospital from a cryo round buried in the base of his skull, and he would dream of Shepard smiling at an armful of soft, blue blankets with a baby swaddled inside, staring up intelligently with impossible green eyes.

* * *

**Liara took my DNA and made a baby. I KNOW SHE DID! I'm onto you, Bioware. Thanks for reading. Review if you like.**


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